We have developed a new virtual seminars programme so that you can access most of the content of our free courses whenever and wherever you want. Each seminar comes as a series of audio files which you can listen to on your computer or download to your MP3 player.

The first two virtual seminars are "Strategic Thinking" and "Setting up a Nurse-led Social Enterprise in Health" and these are entirely free to access.

Could you run a succesful PCT? Can you bring your community back from the brink of a healthcare disaster and stay within budget? Dr Foster have developed an online game which simulates running a PCT.This game provides you with a range of tools, from health needs mapping to hospitals, GPs and health visitors, to help you improve the health of your local population. You can even rank yourself against your friends and colleagues on the "High Score" table :)

This report from the 4 Chief Nursing Officers sets the direction for modernising nursing careers. The
priorities focus on the careers of registered nurses, but it is recognised
that nurses do not work in isolation and nursing teams include more
than registered nurses. Nursing careers also need to take account of
changes in the careers of other professional groups. Importantly, this
report recognises that careers take different forms: while some will
choose to climb an upward ladder of increasing responsibility and
higher rewards, many other nurses choose a more lateral career
journey, moving within and between care groups and settings. Our
actions are for all nurses no matter what the nature of their career. The report can be downloaded here (pdf format - 323 Kb)

New Social Enterprise Briefings

The Queens Nursing Institute has just published a briefing guide to Social Enterprises which can be downloaded here (pdf format
- 133 Kb). There is also an excellent collection of resources on the Social Enterprise page of the NHS Networks site

Trusts not complying with Race Relations Act

An audit by the Healthcare Commission has found that the NHS may not be complying with legislation aimed at promoting equality. Their findings suggest that most trusts have not met their responsibilities to publish information under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. Inspectors spent 30 minutes scanning each website of all 570 NHS trusts, looking for information that legislation has required public bodies to publish since May 2002. In that half an hour, they could only find this information on the websites of seven NHS trusts - around one per cent of the total. The audit is not a definitive test of compliance, but the findings do suggest a significant problem with the number of trusts meeting statutory codes of practice

District nurses ‘lack leadership’, says QNI

A lack of professional leadership has left the district nursing workforce without an effective voice in policy making and planning, according to a report from the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI). The report, Vision and Values: A call for action on community nursing, published last month, is based on interviews with groups of district nurses across the UK. It says that many district nurses are critical of nursing organisations for an absence of vision or national leadership at a time when their workloads are increasing but their numbers are dwindling. Early discharge of patients means that, according to one nurse, ‘the patients emerge quicker and sicker so we have to work faster and slicker’. Many district nurses report staff shortages and that their services run on good will alone.

The QNI argues that a national vision for district and community nursing, and a strategy to deliver it, are needed. This would include a leadership development programme to ensure that the expertise of district nurse is integral to decision making about policy, strategic commissioning and service delivery.Institute director Rosemary Cook called for a new national forum of professional organisations and health departments to take forward issues raised by the report. Chief nursing officer for England Chris Beasley said: ‘With all the developments in community and primary care, it is vital that the profession begins to explore what we need to do to ensure our profession can fulfil its own aspirations and those of commissioners. This QNI report provides a helpful and timely contribution to this process’

Burdett Trust for Nursing launches 'Leadership and the Business of Caring' - a project to take patient care issues "from bedside to boardroom."

A new nursing initiative aims to push patient care up the Board agenda of health trusts and address the further development of senior nurses. The Burdett Trust for Nursing has commissioned the Office for Public Management (OPM) to carry out a study to form the basis for the development for executive nurses and the Boards of which they are members.

Increasingly patient-centred healthcare provision and commissioning are demanding a different approach to the way local Boards operate and manage patient care .Customer care, reputation, marketing, risk management and innovative quality care now need equal ranking with finance, targets and outcomes on Boards' agendas.
OPM will conduct surveys, interviews and workshops over the next two months involving a wide range of those with professional and community interests in healthcare. It will report results and recommendations in mid April. Alan Gibbs, chairman of the Trust, said: 'The development of leadership for patient care is one of our key areas of interest and we have made it the subject of the Trust's first commissioned project. Being independent gives us a unique opportunity to push the boundaries of innovation in support of patients and nurses.' For more info, please visit the Burdett Fund for Nursing.

This toolkit is intended to complement the report From values to action: The Chief Nursing Officer’s review of mental health nursing. From values to action makes a number of good practice recommendations that apply to nurses working in services for people across the whole age range. Recommendations relate to nursing practice and education and the organisational context in which care is provided. The toolkit is largely for the use of organisations, in consultation with stakeholders – but anyone can use it to reflect on current local nursing-related issues.

It is anticipated that, during 2008, stakeholder organisations that contributed to From values to action will together review developments to date. A research evaluation project is also being established to identify progress and ways in which successful implementation can happen.

Towards a Million Change Agents - a review of the social movements literature: implications for large scale change in the NHS by Paul Bate, Helen Bevan &Glenn Robert

This review has four objectives:
• to explore ‘social movements’ as a new way of thinking about large-scale systems change
• to assess the potential contribution of applying this new perspective to NHS improvement
• to enrich and extend NHS thinking in relation to large-scale, system-wide change,
and
• to begin to establish a research and evidence base to support the emergence of an improvement movement in the NHS.

This review offers a new perspective on large-scale systems change which may provide new ways of thinking and approaching service improvement and organisational change and development within the NHS.
The central thesis of the review is that by combining insights from organisational studies and social movements theory and analysis, we may discover some previously unused or under-utilised concepts and theories of change that may -
in parallel with existing approaches - contribute to or extend NHS improvement efforts. To date, social movement analysts have looked to organisational theory but there has been little exchange of ideas in the opposite direction. This review
builds on recent work, mostly in the United States, which has begun to redress that imbalance and to promote two-way dialogue. This can be downloaded here (pdf format - 190Kb).

Impact of the Manager’s Span of Control on Leadership and Performance by Doran et al

This study examined the relationships between types of leadership, the number of staff
that managers are responsible for, and patient and nurse outcomes.

• Nurse managers with positive leadership styles, who develop, stimulate, and
inspire followers to exceed their own self-interests for a higher purpose and are
based on a series of exchanges or interactions between leader and followers, had
more-satisfied staff.
• Nurse managers with negative leadership styles, who take action only when
required or when issues become serious or who avoid leadership responsibilities,
had less-satisfied staff.
• Patient satisfaction was higher on units where managers used a positive
leadership style.
• Patient satisfaction was lower on units where managers had a large number of
staff reporting to them.
• Units with managers who had a large number of staff reporting to them had
higher levels of staff turnover.
• Units with managers who used a positive leadership style had lower levels of
staff turnover.
• Having a large number of staff reporting to the managers reduced the positive
effect of the positive leadership styles on staff satisfaction and increased the
negative effect of the negative leadership styles on staff satisfaction.
• Having a large number of staff reporting to the managers also reduced the
positive effect of the positive leadership styles on patient satisfaction.
• No leadership style will overcome having a large number of staff reporting to the
managers.
• Organizations should implement management training programs to develop
positive leadership styles.
• Guidelines need to be developed regarding the optimum number of staff that
should report to nurse managers.

One of the areas
highlighted in the white paper is the increasing role of social enterprises
and we are receiving an increasing number of queries about what social
enterprises are and how to develop them. The Social Enterprise have published
an excellent publication, "a guide to social enterprises" which
can be downloaded
here (4.1 Mb pdf format).

Review of
the literature on team leadership published

We have published
our Review of the Literature on
Team Leadership which was commissioned by the Health Foundation. The
review can be downloaded here (pdf
format 632Kb) and contains an analysis of the key literature on teams,
team development and team leadership. It also provides an evidence base
to a variety of team interventions and should be of particular use to
those who are trying to develop team leadership prorgammes.

New leadership
literature added to the site

We have also added
an evaluation of the RCN Clinical Leadership Programme and an evaluation
of the LEO (Leading Empowered Organisations) Programme which were both
commissioned by the Department of Health. The LEO evaluation can be downloaded
here (pdf format 753 Kb) and the RCN evaluation can be downloaded
here (2.1 Mb)

The Department of
Health Policy Research Programme commissioned a research team from the
RCN Institute and the University of Sheffield to investigate: a) how NHS
trusts were establishing ‘modern matron’ posts; b) the experiences
of nurses in these posts; and c) the impact of their activities on patient
care. The research team was also asked to identify messages and lessons
for trusts about the processes and inputs that enabled matrons to work
effectively.

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